It occurs to me that the Sith may not be the aberrations that the Jedi make them out to be. A cursory review of the history of most of the Sith wars thus far show too many coincidences that just “happen” to facilitate the fall of Jedi to the Dark Side to be believable. It appears that something is actively trying to cultivate Sith and the use and study of the Dark Side. I suppose that it is possible that the Jedi Order are secretly fomenting Sith Wars every so often for some arcane end, but it seems more likely that the Force itself is responsible for this. A galaxy-wide conspiracy simply isn’t plausible any more than that “Elders of Trion” thing is.

If the Force is actively trying to create Sith, then why? Could it be possible that the Sith are the true natural order as they claim, and that the Jedi really are just a twisted perversion of nature? Still, if that was the case, then I have a hard time rationalizing why the Jedi keep on winning over and over again. Especially when it is clear that the Sith are trying to impose their will upon the Force whereas the Jedi try to be an embodiment of it.

I suspect that a far more likely explanation lies in the idea that the Jedi are closer to the true nature of the Force than the Sith – but are still missing something fundamental. Something that is trying to find an outlet through the Sith. This leads to questions about what are the key differences between the Jedi and Sith – and which of these differences may be built upon the fundamental piece that must be missing from the Jedi philosophy. What is it that is needing an outlet?

Fundamentally the Sith are about the Dark Side of the Force. I suspect the emphasis on forcing it to bend to your will is a side item. I have seen plenty of examples of those who gave into the Dark Side without any hint of control – and how it ended up destroying them in short order. If you cannot control the power flow, then it will destroy you. Controlling the power flow gives the illusion that you are bending the Force itself to your will – but it’s only an illusion. Perhaps by the Jedi ignoring this power flow – the power of the Dark Side – it continues to seek an outlet until it finds one in a prospective Sith. In which case, no amount of destroying the Sith will work, it is like trying to prevent a river from flooding by putting up levees. The higher you build the barriers, the greater the disaster when they – inevitably – eventually give way.

The big question gets to be this: if the Dark Side is a natural part of the Force as I suspect it is, then how exactly should it be approached? There MUST be a better way than simply sacrificing force-sensitives to it; if that was all there was, force-sensitivity should have bred itself out of existence eons ago.

Clearly the Sith way of trying to control it through sheer willpower is actively selecting the most willful and power crazed individuals to be Sith masters. No wonder the most powerful Sith also tend to be madmen bent on galactic domination. What is that but a small and natural extension of their obsession with control?

The Jedi approach seems to be to ignore the feelings and situations that might lead to the Dark Side in hopes that it will go away. Those who succumb to temptation or frustration are labeled as Sith – and are exiled. If sufficient numbers of “Sith” are do this all at once, then another Sith War starts.

There has to be another way, a way to use the Force and yet not be driven insane by it. But to learn this, I think one must first delve deeper into discussions of what is the Force and how does it relate to us? Strangely enough, this seems to be an avenue of thinking that neither side has even pursued.

Which leads me to the other quandary that has been bothering me for some time: who first learned of the Force and set up the first institutions of its use? The Jedi make the claim that they were the first to begin studying the Force. They may well have been, but the Jedi today are not the type of group to undertake such an endeavor. Ergo, even if it was the Jedi, it was not the Jedi as they are today.

Surely those who first studied the Force must have asked questions similar to what I am asking now. Even if the answers are buried in the Jedi Archives on Coruscant, I will have to search for them. Of course, finding a way to get direct personal access to the Jedi Archives is going to be quite a task. It might be a lot easier to start with the dead or abandoned worlds where Jedi or Sith are believed to have once dwelled long ago. There may be clues leading to other, older sites where some relic of the original order and it’s studies still exist.

This endless cycle of war needs to end, but before I can work on that, I need to learn how it began.

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